Is global warming just another ‘End-of-the-World’ delusion?

UPDATE: less than 24 hours after posting this, we already have an end of the world prediction naming global warming, see below.

New end of the world book treats climate change just like many other end of times worries that have not come to pass.
Weston, FL — (SBWIRE) — 07/16/2012 — The end of the world is not going to happen within our lifetimes. That’s the word from Justin Deering, author of The End of the World Delusion: How Doomsayers Endanger Society.

“We’re bombarded with end-of-the-world scares practically everywhere you look,” Deering explains. “You hear about it in church, on the news, in the movies. These doomsday scenarios have actually bankrupted people and destroyed their lives. A few people have gotten rich at the expense of the more gullible.”

Last year was a big year for end of the world talks, as Family Radio’s well-publicized prediction of May 21, 2011 as the day of the Rapture and subsequent day of wrath on October 21 came and went without incident. This year will be even bigger as the Mayan calendar ends on December 21, 2012, which many think will lead to something big happening.

Many are spending their life savings getting ready for the end. Doomsday Preppers and Doomsday Bunkers are two shows that have come out this year, showing people spending their hard-earned cash on survival kits and underground bunkers. They’re ready to weather out the Apocalypse.

As for Deering? He’s not worried at all. “The world’s not going anywhere,” he says. “There are always people who fall for this stuff. This survivalist mentality we’re seeing is Y2K all over again.”

People have been worried about the End Times for thousands of years, and with the benefit of hindsight, it is obvious that there was nothing to worry about. The author of the End-of-the-World Delusion contends that there is still nothing to worry about.

“All that happens when one of these predictions is proven wrong is the doomsayers go and pick another date. They haven’t called it right yet.”

Deering doesn’t care whether the claims arise from religious beliefs or scientific concerns. “It doesn’t matter to me whether they’re a preacher or a scientist, a shaman mystic or an expert researcher. If they’re saying the end is near, they’re wrong.”

The End-of-the-World Delusion is available now at Amazon at Barnes and Noble. The eBook is priced at $9.99, the hardcover at $24.95, and the paperback at an appropriate $20.12.

A Kindle version is also available.

About Justin DeeringJustin Deering graduated from Lynn University with a degree in business, and is a member of the honor society, Sigma Beta Delta.He worked his way through college as a tutor and has experience in conducting research and presenting it in a logical manner. Deering and his wife, Megan, live in Florida.
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Full disclosure: I have not read this book, but I find the press release interesting. To get a feel for the author, here’s another article by Deering below. – Anthony

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Global Warming: Changing Hearts, Changing Minds

By Justin Deering

A few months back, noted climate skeptic Richard Muller reversed his position, saying that temperatures on the earth are indeed rising. After conducting a study partially funded by the Charles Koch Foundation, noted for funding global warming skeptics and tea party, Muller declared that while it made sense to be a skeptic two years ago, there was no longer any reason to do so.1

More recently, noted environmental leader James Lovelock, formulator of the Gaia Hypothesis, reversed his position as well. While once he claimed that man-made global warming would lead to the deaths of billions and billions of people by the end of this century, he has since noted the lack of warming and had this to say:2

I was “alarmist” about climate change and so was Gore! The problem is we don’t know what the climate is doing. We thought we knew 20 years ago. That led to some alarmist books—mine included—because it looked clear-cut, but it hasn’t happened. The climate is doing its usual tricks. There’s nothing much really happening yet. We were supposed to be halfway toward a frying world now. The world has not warmed up very much since the millennium.

If these were just politicians flip-flopping on an issue, well, that’s to be expected. But take notice, because these are prominent individuals in the field who have made a living based on their previous assertions; changing their stances threatens their very livelihood. These two examples should cause everyone to question and reassess their own beliefs when it comes to issues such as climate change.

It’s easy to get the idea that global warming skeptics aren’t familiar with the science, that if they were more educated they would accept the idea catastrophe is right around the corner. A new study dispels this myth, in fact demonstrating the opposite—an increase in scientific literacy actually leads people to challenge the prevailing scientific wisdom concerning climate change.3,4

To illustrate this fact, consider that recently, a group of 49 former NASA employees, including astronauts and engineers, have written to the agency and asked them to discontinue making “unproven and unsubstantiated remarks” regarding manmade global warming. They feel that the science is not settled, and that taking a position that agrees with carbon dioxide emissions as the cause of climate change would reflect poorly on the agency in the future.5 Would anyone be willing to say that these NASA scientists were ignorant or anti-science?

NASA’s response:6

NASA sponsors research into many areas of cutting-edge scientific inquiry, including the relationship between carbon dioxide and climate. As an agency, NASA does not draw conclusions and issue “claims” about research findings. We support open scientific inquiry and discussion.

Even so, James Hansen, director of NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies, continues to write things like “Global warming isn’t a prediction. It is happening.”7 Hansen continues to be a source of embarrassment for the agency, with his multiple arrests, the most recent one being to protest the development of the Canadian oil pipline.8,9

Heh. It reminds me of this website – http://www.bibliotecapleyades.net/esp_2012_43.htm – when I was doing a little research on Anthony L. Peratt’s work on z-pinch (plasma). One thing that caught my eye… the date of 12-21-2012 for “the ecliptic of our solar system will intersect with the Galactic plane, called the “Galactic Equator” of the Milky Way”.

I was only trying to find more about what happened to the ancient civilization at the end of Ice Age. Just can’t get away from what happened at that time.

“It doesn’t matter to me whether they’re a preacher or a scientist, a shaman mystic or an expert researcher. If they’re saying the end is near, they’re wrong.” Global Warming is Politically-Correct Voodoo

Can I recommned Charles Mackey’s: “Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds”. First published in 1841 it is still relevant. The crowds have not become any less mad. A kindle version is available for $0.99 on Amazon.

The only form of sadism I practice is getting people of this ‘apocalyptic’ persuasion to contradict themselves, which results in classic eye swivelling rage.
Simple one to try, ask a Greenie if they believe that fossil fuels are a finite resource and that they are about to run out real soon?…when they answer yes – ask them why they’re still worried about CO2 global warming?
This one always gets the Malthusian Greens. Ask them if they believe there are too many people on the planet using up its finite resources? (see above)…when they answer yes – ask them if they’re opposed to Western style technological development in ‘third world countries’…when they answer yes – ask them why birth rates are low and falling in developed countries and high and rising in under developed countries?
There are endless examples of the muddled thinking and scientific illiteracy that Warmists prey upon and endless amounts of fun to be had tormenting Believers.
I always keep a few ‘killer’ quips on hand they come in handy for the real stubborn and stupid types who stick to their guns.
1.Why don’t you turn off your Central Heating/Air-conditioning?
2.Thanks for explaining the intricacies of planetary C02 climate change to me…by the way do you know how your fridge works?
Ah…I get a warm glow just thinking about it.

This is one of quite a few books, papers and articles in recent years that show, one way or another, that our thinking is much less logical and reasonable than we like to think it is.

The problem is well delineated: People, especially those with well developed thinking skills, are prone to many logical errors. People don’t assess risk well. Experts are worse at predicting things than are dart-throwing monkeys. etc. etc.

We understand why: The best description of why we think the way we do is the book: The Master and his Emissary by Iain McGilchrist.

Now, all we have to do is come up with a way to deal with the problem.

Justin Deering is the latest of many authors to bring us a much needed message. Eventually, the message will permiate the minds of enough of the population that we will reach a tipping point. What I hope will happen then will be the return of something our grandparents used to call ‘wisdom’.

Some things humans can cause. The Left is predicting the end of capitalism and they are bringing that about… in the Western world. However, Asia is on fire with opportunities. China’s middle class is growing. Most of the people on the globe, living in places like Brazil, Russia, India and China are getting a good chuckle at the baseless global warming fearmongering that comes out of Western academia.

It is an exercise in perverted vanity. The AGW fable is almost biblical in its impending apocalypse. However, since we’re in the anthropogenic age, it isn’t god who causes hurricanes and earthquakes to punish his creations, but coal trains

I can honestly say I am not that concerned about people who spend their lifesavings, or any portion of their wealth, as a result of believing in some doomsday.

What I am greatly concerned about is other people spending my wealth due to their belief in a doomsday scenario. I have seen little evidence to show “climate change” is anything but this second situation.

Heh. It reminds me of this website – http://www.bibliotecapleyades.net/esp_2012_43.htm – when I was doing a little research on Anthony L. Peratt’s work on z-pinch (plasma). One thing that caught my eye… the date of 12-21-2012 for “the ecliptic of our solar system will intersect with the Galactic plane, called the “Galactic Equator” of the Milky Way”.

I was only trying to find more about what happened to the ancient civilization at the end of Ice Age. Just can’t get away from what happened at that time.

The Mayan long count calendar is set up to start each new age on the crossing of the galactic equator on a conjunction of Earth Sun Galactic Equator at the Winter Solstice. As described here:

“Of the basic configuration as detailed, with reference to the crossing point of the earth ecliptic line and the galactic equator, one may note then that visually, there will be an alignment of the earth, the sun, and the galactic equator twice every year. In one instance, the earth will be between the sun and the galactic equator, and in another (exactly 6 months later) the sun will be between the earth and the galactic equator. The 2012 AD alignment as is said to be associated with the Long Count calendar is of exactly this type, being of the latter stated order: Earth > Sun > Galactic Equator, but critically, with one very important additional factor, which indeed makes the entire arrangement far more complex and infrequent: The 2012 AD conjunction is one that involves the earth, sun, and the galactic equator, specifically at a time when the earth is at the winter solstice (northern hemisphere) point of its orbit, at a seasonal extreme. Now, an event of this sort certainly does not occur every year, but rather once only every 25800 years. And this is due to a very subtle celestial motion: precession.”
seehttp://www.ancient-world-mysteries.com/2012.html

I read somewhere (but cannot now find the reference) that the Maya started at 12 12 2012 and worked back.

Wagathon says (July 18, 2012 at 5:08 pm): “However, Asia is on fire with opportunities. China’s middle class is growing. Most of the people on the globe, living in places like Brazil, Russia, India and China are getting a good chuckle at the baseless global warming fearmongering that comes out of Western academia.”

Thanks to these folks the CAGW dogma will be put to the test and proved baseless. No matter what the West does about its own CO2 emissions, worldwide emissions will continue to increase, but–surprise!–the world won’t end. Again.

Of course by then we’ll have another doomsday scenario, and Asia may be affluent enough to buy into it. *sigh*

While I think it’s warming some, I don’t think it will be a disaster like some of the CAGW faithful. The scientific evidence shows that a modest warming of 2C would be, on the whole, a net benefit to society. These warmists seem to neglect that fact. It’s when the climate cools that we have more problems, such as during the LIA, with failed harvests and such. There’s nothing special about the present climate, and no reason to think that it’s superior. While there might be some negatives to a slightly warmer climate, such as higher sea levels, the changes will be gradual and easy to adapt to. No reason to start imposing more taxes and send society back to the dark ages.

Everyone is brilliant at something. Me, I’m totally excellent at being myself!
I’m pretty poor at believing that I’m special, :(, unlike those poor devils who think that they’re so special that the world will discontinue its existence without them.
Catastrophists DNA, it appears, share a common genome, MeMeMeAndBTWMe2.
To be fair, however, much of this regressive combination can be traced back to an unhappy childhood, overly-influenced by neurotic self-loathing, role-models masquerading as relatives , or simply propped-up by a malignant environment.
It can be cured, however, in most cases by taking a step back, a deep breath and re-evaluating.
I’m no paragon, in general, at taking this advice. Some incorrect prejudices I will happily take to the grave but some are trickier to avoid re-consideration. I’ll give just one example of the latter.
Climate models tell us that, in general, winters will be warmer and wetter while summers will be hotter and drier due to increasing levels of CO2 and CH4 etc. Observational data indicates that this is true sometimes and somewhere and false elsewhere and elsetimes.
Weather forecasts, in the UK at least, are now pushing the Jet stream moving as to why empirical and observational experiences contradict the CO2 as a major driver but still the CAGW meme persists! In the US, JS is given no more than a passing mention; in western Europe it’s the excuse de jour or, possibly, a good physical explanation.
Forget scepticism or denialism or contarianism or whatever. Take on cynicism, follow the money, think about the motives, the promise of power but, most of all, the opportunism.
One hundred and fifty years ago we were in a cold time; it’s now warmed up from then and it’s all our fault!!!
I’m brilliant at being me and so I’m happy with that last point. Are you not happy too?

The only form of sadism I practice is getting people of this ‘apocalyptic’ persuasion to contradict themselves, which results in classic eye swivelling rage…..
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My preferred shut-up line for the stubborn types is “…Then how about living what you preach and hand me your car keys and house keys, and Oh, by the way are your clothes made of all cotton, wool and linen? NO? Then you better hand over those too as well as those nice PLASTIC running shoes…” The crowd gathered around to watch their spokesman tromp me start laughing as their spokesman stomps off in a rage.

Spokemen are often bullies and their crowd of followers will often turn on them if they show they are not top dog.

The earth shifted into a cool phase in 2000 as it did in 1940. After a 10 year lag, the 1950-70′s got really cold.

Hopefully this coming winter is also going to be really cold. I can’t wait to see how the warmista explain the coming cold winters away.
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Don’t worry the propaganda machine… ERrr MSM will figure something out. After all the masses have an attention span of about 10 minutes and a sixth grade reading level or so the politicians and their handlers seem to think.

Hansen is a deluded fool. He’s convinced himself that the world is ending, and because he has a Phd behind his name, he’s convinced others as well. Sadly, cranks like Hansen are a dime a dozen and the global warming cult won’t end until the earth cools down so much, even the most rabid believers will have to face the cold hard truth. It’s a HOAX !

It’s possible to go too far in each direction: too far in the alarmist direction and too far in the complacent direction. I remember someone writing pre-Katrina about the disaster facing New Orleans should a bit hurricane strike. Well, it happened.

We’re currently doing battle with our own deceitful government and it’s warmist agenda. A plea for all who would help send them a message. Voting ends in 5 hours Please hurry – everyone gets 8 voteshttp://oursay.org/s/1p1

How about the greeners who turn down the paper bag with glowing “save a tree.” But their basket of goods to purchase is full of paper products, they live in a wood frame home, own wood furniture, walk on wood floors,…etc… all while saving the planet from catastrophic everything.

charles nelson says: @ July 18, 2012 at 5:04 pm
“ask them why birth rates are low and falling in developed countries and high and rising in under developed countries?”
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Torgeir Hansson says: @ July 18, 2012 at 6:06 pm
If my memory serves this is not correct. I believe fertility rates are falling towards maintenance levels (2.41 I think) in developing countries as well. It seems to be happening all over the world.
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You are pretty much correct. First world countries are at or below replacement rate (2.1). The EU is especially below the replacement rate. China, Russia and much of S. America are also around 2 to 2.5ish Only Africa and some (but not all) Muslim countries are well above 3. Several of the African countries are around 5 or more but have high infant mortality and death from starvation related diseases for those under five. The CIA web page has the actual figures.

The most insightful line of this post is :”an increase in scientific literacy actually leads people to challenge the prevailing scientific wisdom…” I think that includes any “scientific wisdom” not just global warming.

No, no, no. Justin Deering is quite wrong. Those clairvoyant Mayans definitely knew that 2012 was going to be a disaster of epic proportions. It’s just that we translated their supposed date of December 21, 2012 wrong. The correct date is November 2, 2012. Get the picture now? But there may still be time to avert subjecting the world to the most narcissistic, egotistical, self absorbed, deceitful, opinionated and, most of all, inexperienced and unqualified incompetent potus the world has yet to know. You know what to do at the ballot boxes. Save the world!

Torgeir Hansson wrote:
“If my memory serves this is not correct. I believe fertility rates are falling towards maintenance levels (2.41 I think) in developing countries as well. It seems to be happening all over the world.”

You are correct Torgeir, the world is changing for the better. Unfortunately many of the warmists are stuck with a 1960’s mindset when the outlook for population growth looked grim.

I strongly recommend Hans Rosling’s videos. He succeeds in making statistics interesting.

He is a climate warmist but he has commentary on modern environmentalism that every environmentalist should hear.

“Global warming. There is a consensus that global warming is real. There has not been much so far, but it’s going to get much, much worse. The thing I would tell the president is that the global warming, according to the global consensus — that’s the IPCC scientists, who won the Nobel Prize — the global warming of the future is going to come from the developing world….” –Richard Muller

Muller was never a skeptic. He made a few doubting noises just long enough to pretend he was, then recanted. Try to find a single skeptical statement of Muller made prior to 2009.

If we’re going to be objective about this and think empirically, then, Mr. Smarty Pants Deering, is missing the bus. People feel this way and they act this way. It is well documented as a fact of human behavior that there has been throughout history a deep and abiding fear that the world is coming to an end. It seems to be a deeply rooted human concern, not unique to our time. “You fools are so deluded and I know the truth!” Brilliant, Smarty Pants, really profound!

How about the greeners who turn down the paper bag with glowing “save a tree.” But their basket of goods to purchase is full of paper products, they live in a wood frame home, own wood furniture, walk on wood floors,…etc… all while saving the planet from catastrophic everything.
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Don’t forget all the petrol based PLASTICS in that house. The wiring insulation, light switch covers, the carpet, flooring, plumbing… and then there is all the metal from the nasty earth shredding mining….

That is why I ask for car keys, house keys, clothes and shoes. If you are a Greenie and not bare arsed living in the woods you are a hypocrite because even agriculture leaves a foot print on Mommy Gaia.

Global Warming, yes there is! Man – made global warming? Yes, there is! Aswad Dam. Go figure. Then there is the Colorado River, etc. These rivers have been blocked with dams. No one has measured the cost of having a major river damned.

If we’re going to be objective about this and think empirically, then, Mr. Smarty Pants Deering, is missing the bus. People feel this way and they act this way…..
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Of course they do. It is just part of being a naturally defenseless naked ape who can think about the future. Those with leadership ability and no real morals have exploited that fear since tribes of naked apes climbed down out of the trees. Shamen and religions have been with us since before recorded history.

Some think it was a religious crisis in addition to the drought that caused the migration of the the Anasazi. For them a 24 year drought, the Little Ice Age and worn out farm fields were the ‘End-of-the-World’ as they knew it.

The interesting aspect of the CAGW issue for me is the nature of the belief.
If you look at actual data (my favorite is temperature anomalies and sea level rises during the entire Holocene (which still barely passes muster with someone like Bob Carter for a sufficiently long period to study). Take that with some GISP2 data (which shows 1872 as the coldest year in Greenland since the last Ice Age), and it becomes clear that there isn’t much going on with the climate that hasn’t happened before. Further, if you look at an El Nino year like 1998, and what happened afterwards, a tipping point becomes a rather far-fetched notion for the climate system.

Yet, people believe, because people will believe the darndest things. A friend of mine talked to me the other day about Steven (sp?) Greer and the Disclosure Project, and swore that there really was something to it. (It’s about communicating with aliens). I took one look at a video of Mr. Greer (I know, you don’t have to say it), and it became painfully obvious that the man is a charlatan of the first order. Yet my friend, whom I normally consider intelligent, believes. It boggles the mind.

Many on this site have a tendency to call CAGW a hoax, whereas I am more inclined towards looking at it like a craze—a form of hysteria akin to general predictions of doom, but also phenomena like our recent financial bubbles (tulip, tech, and housing come to mind).

I’m reading “Crowds And Power” by Elias Canetti right now, and he has some things to say about crowd behavior that seem to illuminate the phenomenon. When you combine crowd behavior with digital media and a general tendency to believe that “something really bad is going to happen because we have all been oh so bad,” powerful forces are set in motion. And irresistible opportunities. For scientists, the drumbeat to focus on the phenomenon, which is real enough (climate change), becomes compelling. The temptation to come up with results that go with the prevailing flow equally so, because there is real discomfort in speaking against it. For politicians, always looking for a wave to ride, the same thing happens. Soon enough you have your self-reinforcing feedback loop. Soon the hue and cry drowns out the contrary voices, the myth becomes gospel, and the doubters and the contrarians become heretics.

Whereas economic crazes (bubbles) burn out when participants lose their money, there is no such luck with the climate. It will continue to change, and could conceivably continue to warm for a good while longer. We are after all only 0.4 °C above the baseline, there are plenty of cat 5 hurricanes in our futures, and more droughts, floods, and locust swarms. How do you counter this kind of bubble? My first hunch is to say that the only bulwark against it is science, appeal to science, and adherence to fundamental scientific principles, and to keep politics as far out of it as humanly possible. Then again, I could be wrong.

Yet the way out is to give believers a way out. How does one do that, effectively and elegantly?

Howard Richman says:
July 18, 2012 at 6:28 pm
I remember someone writing pre-Katrina about the disaster facing New Orleans should a bit hurricane strike. Well, it happened.

If the Dem ward heelers running the show in NOLA had used the federal funds appropriated to maintain the levees instead of diverting them to finance vote-buying social programs — or for building statues of themselves in the Sixth Ward — Katrina would have been just another hurricane that passed through.

It’s been six years since Katrina hit. N’Awluns could have been rebuilt into a city on stilts if the billions of dollars in disaster relief that poured in had actually been used for disaster relief. The feds have no idea how much money went there, who received it, or how it was spent — they never tracked it and there’s never been any attempt to establish accountability.

There is no such thing as an “overdue” volcano. While the time since the last eruption is greater than the “average” between eruptions, it is nowhere near the longest time. Also, note that the continent is moving over that hotspot and it is currently moving to progressively thicker crust. Yellowstone might not erupt for another few hundred thousand years or that hot spot might never erupt again, at least until it gets to thinner continental crust.

On a certain day in 1844 those convinced by Wm. Miller to give away all & gather for the end game of a 2nd coming were only left as before.
The event became known as “The Great Disappointment”.
We may well see the re-make of that classic when CO2 doom theories prove to be “The Great Disappointment of this era.
The “Burned-over District” of early 1800’s New York state earned that nickname because so many there became a believer of a faith that there were very few left over who hadn’t been consumed with some fiery fervor.
We now see some populations have faith in CO2 theories and where those believers stand are apparently their own “Burned-over District” .
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The reason the Left hates free enterprise is because 97% of the business outside of government in dead and dying Old Europe do business in the underground economy to avoid confiscatory secular, socialist and liberal government fees and taxes.

It’s been money well spent in metro New Orleans, producing a substantial recovery from Katrina, according to an independent report released this month. The report, compiled by the Washington-based Brookings Institution and the Greater New Orleans Community Data Center, analyzed 20 indicators of prosperity such as repopulation, housing costs, local tax collections, and the reopening of schools. It concludes that the New Orleans area is poised to become a safer, more sustainable, and economically stronger city than it was before the storm.

“New Orleans is still a work in progress, but a lot of nonprofit organizations, foundations, and community organizations have come together to bring real change to the city,” says Amy Liu, deputy director of the Brookings Institution’s Metropolitan Policy Program. Most of the funding for these efforts has come from the federal government, along with philanthropic organizations such as the Rockefeller and Gates foundations, says Ms. Lui.

I have allowed myself one off-topic response to Bill Tuttle, and hope it will be OK with one single response to Wagathon as well. Here it is:

“The Left hates free enterprise?” I’ll tell you who hates free enterprise. Free enterprise, as in the private sector, hates free enterprise.
Any U.S. company of any size has since the nation began followed a single-minded objective to establish monopolies, oligopolies, and market control. Look at banking, look at the media, look at the energy industry, look at transportation, insurance, health care, retail, and the list goes on. The trend is the same in every major industry: consolidation. The myth of American business wanting to compete on an even playing field is just that: a myth. Whenever faced with competition, they seek to obliterate it. If it is national, through buy-outs and raw muscle (ref. Wal-Mart). If it is international: protectionism bought through politicians (ref Boeing vs. Airbus tanker planes). They want control. There is none of them that has the slightest intention of participating in “free enterprise” if they can help it.
And if you want “free enterprise,” or something that vaguely looks like it, band together with reasonable people to get corporate money out of politics (sure, union money too, what the hell) and big-box stores out of local communities. Because once they are in they ravage, despoil, and rape those local communities, and once they have market control in a service sector they nickel and dime you to death. Take a look at your checking account statement, and you know I speak the truth.

So if you are serious about free enterprise, do this: vote only for national politicians who promise to break up near-monopolies and oligopolies (and de-fund climate change nonsense, although I vote to keep some money for serious research), and for city councilmen and -women who will keep big-box stores out of your community. Patronize local banks, and buy on main street. Because if you don’t the day will not be far away before you are wearing a red vest with festive buttons on it. You’ll have to check in to WUWT at 5 AM, before your shift begins, and you WILL make minimum wage.

“You hear about it in church, on the news, in the movies. These doomsday scenarios have actually bankrupted people and destroyed their lives. A few people have gotten rich at the expense of the more gullible.”

This is not a lame statement. It happens all the time. Research Harold Camping (some followers are now bankrupted) and Al Gore (carbon investment schemes, second large house with only 6 fireplaces & 9 bathrooms).

There were many end-of-the-world scenarios actually unfolding in human history. Here, in Mitteleuropa, the most recent one being 1944/45. Millions and millions perished, the world certainly ended for them. And the rest of us were left in utter desolation, great cities in ruin, infrastructure destroyed, refugees milling, plague, famine & mass rape abounded, property, if any left undamaged, confiscated, freedom curtailed to nil. Huge unexploded bombs are still found on construction sites, the lovely park I take my dog to for regular walks is built on mass graves.

Similar to the end of the world predictions is the peak oil / oil running out soon nonsense. It’s so much nonsense that even the arch Warmist George Monbiot of the Guardian admitted earlier this month that he was wrong about peak oil. This is all very similar to the 1960s / 1970s predictions about mass famine and death by 2000 or was that 1980 or 1990? ;-)

Torgeir Hansson says:
July 18, 2012 at 9:38 pm
@ Bill Tuttle: From The Christian Science Monitor:
It’s been money well spent in metro New Orleans, producing a substantial recovery from Katrina, according to an independent report released this month. The report, compiled by the Washington-based Brookings Institution and the Greater New Orleans Community Data Center, analyzed 20 indicators of prosperity such as repopulation, housing costs, local tax collections, and the reopening of schools.

That accounts for *some* of the money that went there, and there’s still almost $25 million in military equipment (mostly generators) that went to NOLA and disappeared.

A good read in this regard is Gross & Levitt’s “Higher Superstition.” Mostly a well-deserved smackdown of academic PoMo, but also has some interesting things to say about the West’s millennial bouts of End of the World fevers.

I see a big resemblance with the biblical Tower of Babel. People thought they could build a tower towards heaven. Now: people think they are the master of climate. Then: at some point, God gave them different languages so they could no longer understand each other. Now: climate does what climate does and eventually man will realize he knows nothing. That will be the day CAGW dies.

Torgeir Hansson says: Yet the way out is to give believers a way out. How does one do that, effectively and elegantly?

Twelve-Step Program??

Dr K.A. Rodgers says: Can I recommned Charles Mackey’s: “Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds”

Seconded.

Ian W says: July 18, 2012 at 5:29 pm

References to the Galactic Centre supposed line-up on Dec 21 (winter solstice) this year are both inaccurate and misleading. Astronomically, the Galactic Plane aligned with the Winter Solstice point of the Ecliptic in 1999 – but since precession is about one degree every 72 years, this alignment is not just a nine-day wonder. The alignment with the Galactic Centre insofar as one can even talk about alignment, will take about another 250 years.

There is a lot of hot air about the Mayan stuff. Certainly, they were superb astronomers with a calendrical accuracy unmatched until fairly recently. As to the spiritual dimensions, I have seen things… but first let’s clear the rubbish and check evidence with the superstitions.

Torgeir Hannsen: “Any U.S. company of any size has since the nation began followed a single-minded objective to establish monopolies, oligopolies, and market control. Look at banking, look at the media, look at the energy industry, look at transportation, insurance, health care, retail, and the list goes on. The trend is the same in every major industry: consolidation.”

But only a powerful state can deliver this. A weak state cannot.

And that’s why the Fall of Communism and the Soviet Union proves the impossibility of a single corporation controlling everything: it would be unable to coordinate prices and production without massive irrational waste – and even then, it would have to be totalitarian and dangerous to people to force their acquiesence.

Bill Tuttle: If all that was wasted during the reconstruction of New Orleans was $25 million worth of generators, I would be astounded. We’re talking a total reconstruction budget of over $100 billion. With a B. But that’s off topic, so let’s bag it.

The Mayans probably wasted more than that when they built Chichen Itza. But that calendar. Man, those guys were good.

I would add another delusion to the global warming end of the world one, that I had to deal with just today: anti mining delusions.

We are having trouble with a local Indonesian group who believe that exploration for minerals and mining will bring tsunamis. I have some sympathy though, because they are very uneducated.

Global warming is essentially an anti-mining belief, as it is largely derived from extraction of fossil fuels. It may entirely be an anti-mining delusion, these are perhaps even more common then ‘end of the world’ delusions. We get them all the time, I have counted over the years about 200 different anti mining delusions, always from various radical environmentalists, and they are nearly always derived from the same reason, and attempt to control the environment, the land and society through environmental ideology and anti mining delusions.

Dan Gardner’s book Future Babble outlines the profile of the typical dart throwing monkey, no highly credentialed prophet.
He/she has one big idea, is extremely confident and the predicted catastrophe (as it always is) is far into the future.

The peculiar thing about eschatology is that there is a single element all apocalyptic predictions have in common.
In the course of time all practioners have been proven completely wrong.
Even a blind batter (Brit. “batsman”) could do better. The average weather forecaster has a far higher success rate. For a climatologist to forecast catastrophe he must be willing to accept a 100% failure rate in his forecasts.

Gail Combs says: “Some think it was a religious crisis in addition to the drought that caused the migration of the the Anasazi. For them a 24 year drought, the Little Ice Age and worn out farm fields were the ‘End-of-the-World’ as they knew it.”

I was thinking of collective memory, BIG memory of the sort Velikovsky talks about in “Mankind in Amnesia”. The human species probably does have memory of global cataclysm. Religious entrepreneurs exploit the fears, as you say, but the fear is not purely imaginary. And we all feel it if we are honest, even Deering, especially him since he is so intent on denying it!

This is probably one of the best kept secrets and what has made CAGW and Globalization so confusing. Corporations, banks… are NOT capitalists, Not in favor of free enterprise, Not in favor of the freedom of individuals (can’t have them start a business and become competitors)

Big Oil, the World Bank/IMF, and the MSM are all pushing this latest Doom and Gloom and more importantly the UN’s Agenda 21 – grow smart designed communities – because it gives them complete control over us.

The latest US Supreme Court decision that the US government can order US citizens to BUY what they tell you must seem like a God sent to these Machiavellian Manipulators. I am sure they have all those “Smart metered” appliances waiting in the wings with big price tags for the soon to be captive buyers. – Up-grade to a costly appliance we can shut off at will or we will TAX you each year. – This also means the corporations get first dibs on any electric produced and not the individual.

The big difference between other ‘End-of-the-World’ delusions and CAGW is this one is global and the ‘Doom and Gloom’ is real because it is being manufactured. The Banker created 2008 Food Crisis is one example, the EPA shutting down utilities that use coal is another. I really do not want to be around as they herd us into those micro-mini 275 to 300 sq. ft. living spaces that “are smaller than currently allowed by building regulations…” The fact they are already being Beta tested in NYC should make everyone worry. (Doom and gloom for real)

And that’s why the Fall of Communism and the Soviet Union proves the impossibility of a single corporation controlling everything: it would be unable to coordinate prices and production without massive irrational waste – and even then, it would have to be totalitarian and dangerous to people to force their acquiesence.
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That is why they pulled the plug on that experiment. The EU, another experiment, is the one they like much better. It gives the masses more of an illusion of “democracy” while leaving the actual control in the hands of the unelected.

Lamy was former European Commissioner for Trade. He graduated from Sciences Po Paris, specializing in economics. He was France’s Economics and Finance Minister and a member of the French Socialist Party. He gives talks, along with Tony Blair and Bill Clinton at the London School of Economics started by the originators of the Fabian Society.

I suggest you look into the “Third Way” endorsed by Bill Clinton and the brain child of Anthony Giddens, Director of the London School of Economics.

Do not miss the wolf in a sheepskin on the Fabien Shield in the background. Or Sidney Webb and George Bernard Shaw striking the world with hammers to shatter it so the world could be “remoulded near the heart’s desire” the line from Omar Khayyam written underneath.

‘End-of-the-World’ delusion? I do not think so. There are some very powerful people intent on ending our world and installing theirs and CAGW has been one of their “Hammers”

“No, no, no. Justin Deering is quite wrong. Those clairvoyant Mayans definitely knew that 2012 was going to be a disaster of epic proportions. It’s just that we translated their supposed date of December 21, 2012 wrong. The correct date is November 2, 2012.”

Exactly what I was thinking!!! Except it will take 49 days to 12/21/12…

In religious terms this is called eschatology, and it has been a danger to mankind for millennia.

It is end-of-times beliefs that makes most of Islam apathetic, so it produces nothing. It is this same eschatology that allows president Armadinnerjacket to threaten nuclear war without any fear. Its what causes cults to commit mass suicide.

Eschatology is very dangerous, and no more so than when Greens preach it, and have command of some of the levers of world power too.

It is a mistake to confuse the behavior of individuals and firms within an economy with the structure of that economy.

Individuals and firms seek their self interest as they understand it. This is well understood as part of free enterprise systems. Adam Smith wrote on this centuries ago.

That individuals and firms seek free handouts from governments at the expense of others is inevitable. Hopefully neither of you believe that there is some system of government is possible that avoids or negates these truths of human nature (firms being groups of humans acting in concert). The brilliance of free enterprise is that the interests of the individuals and firms is set by rule in competition in a manner that drives the best possible outcome for the most people. The process is not pretty, but the history of the world over the last couple of centuries show that all the experiments in socialism and other efforts that promise to defy human nature have resulted in impoverishment and loss of freedom especially for those whom the experiments promised most to help.

Most of the human population is now awakening from a long nightmare of socialist promises turned into socialist failure (China, Russia, India, Eastern Europe, etc.). The countries still clinging to socialist fantasies are going down (see North Korea, Greece, etc.). Obama and gang, showing a perverse ignorance of world history, are still trying to take us into the nightmare that the others are now awakening from.

The CAGW gang is part of the residuum of Marxist thinking, justified under the general terms of Post Normal Science and the Precautionary Principle. Even though recent history shows that it is precisely in socialist countries that environmental degradation is rampant, The CAGW crowd and the general enviromental movement would have us believe that is greedy corporations that are the evil agents of environmental destruction. They would have us turn it all over to governments to save the world. This is not intelligent.

I certainly agree that we should fight every effort by people and firms (corporations) to rent-seek from the government at our expense. At least half the people in America are now on the take. They are freeloaders, riding in the wagon while the rest of us are trying to push it up the hill. Whether in corporations or as individuals, people who take, using the power of government, from those who work for what they have are wrong and should be stopped.

To Combs…
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I am all for capitalism. However I am NOT for Neo-Corporatism which is an unholy alliance between corporations and government. As individuals that is what we have to be ever vigilant against. (My distinguishing between the two confuses the heck out of a lot of people)

I also have a major dislike for fractional reserve banking that has evolved into a US Banks Operating Without Reserve Requirements I consider it out right theft (legalized) and a form of hidden slavery. This is because most homes/businesses have mortgages and whether the property is owned or leased the bankers get the first cut of the profits of your labor and with a zero reserve requirement it is ALL profit except for a bit of operating expenses you mostly pay as points.

One could consider the USA as the history of the struggle of people against the central bankers from day one. link (We lost a hundred years ago)

“The colonies would gladly have borne the little tax on tea and other matters had it not been that England took away from the colonies their money, which created unemployment and dissatisfaction. The inability of the colonists to get power to issue their own money permanently out of the hands of George III and the international bankers was the PRIME reason for the Revolutionary War.”
Benjamin Franklin’s autobiography

I have another book to add everyone’s last summer on earth before the Big Surprise reading list. Richard Landes, a professor of history at Boston University, and who blogs at TheAugeanStables.com, had a new book out last year, “Heaven on Earth, The Varieties of the Millennial Experience” [Oxford University Press]; which treats on the end of the world subject from a more scholarly frame of reference. No, he has no impacting planetesimal on the cover [he could probably use help with the graphic design] and his writing style and general focus may not be as popularly engaging as Mr. Deering’s fine book, BUT he comes up with some of the greatest new terms like: “semiotically aroused” – probably worth the cover price by itself. To quote:

For people who have entered apocalyptic time, everything quickens, enlivens, coheres. They become semiotically aroused—everything has meaning, patterns. The smallest incident can have immense importance and open the way to an entirely new vision of the world, one in which forces unseen by other mortals operate. If the warrior lives with death at his shoulder, then apocalyptic warriors live with cosmic salvation before them, just beyond their grasp.

So, it this years end of the Earth scenarios read like a badly written novel, Rich’s book might help you understand why.

Gail Combs:I am all for capitalism. However I am NOT for Neo-Corporatism which is an unholy alliance between corporations and government. As individuals that is what we have to be ever vigilant against. (My distinguishing between the two confuses the heck out of a lot of people)
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Bill Hicks in Hell, taking questions from callers…

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CALLER: Aren’t you maybe afraid that you really will go to hell, for all the thangs you say bad about your country?

HICKS: Well, I didn’t know that was one of the requirements for going to hell. Where did you read that?

CALLER: Well some of the thangs you say aren’t very nice.

HICKS: Well, actually Sir, if you listen closely, everything I talk about is true freedom and true democracy. It so happens that we’ve swayed so far from the true values of this country, that to right-wing fundamentalist reactionaries–such as yourself–seem to hear that I’m talking about the opposite. What you don’t realize is you’ve been duped by the capitalistic system, you think capitalism is what America’s all about. Theres’ a difference between capitalism and free enterprise.
I believe in free enterprise and I believe in America and I love it for it’s true values. Is that stated clearly enough?

CALLER: Well, it just doesn’t seem very American to me..

HICKS: Ha Ha HA! Should I drink a beer and watch American Gladiators and just shut up?

But some people insist on peddling fixed-pie drive-to-the bottom thinking popularized by Karl Marx.

Almost every industry you refer to is heavily regulated by the government. (Retail is not, I don’t see any monopolies there, indeed the once strong department stores failed while Amazon and some rinky-dink store outfit from Arkansas succeeded by serving customers while operating efficiently.

Big corps and govs try to minimize and suppress uncertainty and risk and unknowns. But that’s exactly the territory where freedom and innovation originate and operate. So their success would/does/did kill the base and ground of their own survival.